“New Simplicity”
The Portland bridge, the Tilikum Crossing Bridge, is a good illustration, in the broadest sense, of the concept of New Simplicity.
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The term ‘New Simplicity’ might be one way to describe Portland. The terminology is originally a reference to the musical style of post-modern classical music that is favored by some contemporary East European, & German & Russian, classical composers; composers Henryk Gorecki and Arvo Pärt come to mind. Their American equivalents would include contemporary classical composers such as Philip Glass, John Adams, and Steve Reich; they frequently utilize simplistic and/or minimalistic motifs. Basically this is musical construction of a restrained and/or simplistic nature but not without elements of complexity and depth.
Every city has its own sounds, its own orchestral beat. In the case of Portland, it is subject to a somewhat constant tonality that is composed of river noises, the sound of trains & the light rail, the hum of automobiles streaming on its many highways, the voices of people walking or biking over its many bridges, and the vibration of the winds in the numerous forested areas within the city.
Simple sonic textures, Portland is like that, laced with a healthy dose of dissonance.
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nine
there is a quality of pitch of pulse
to everywhere that we may live ..
a faraway house on a peninsula – lake ontario
an urban domicile, a 2nd floor or a 3rd floor
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the voice can be our singular music
.. music reverberates in a room
a few hours from now, we shall follow a disturbance
the limits of rhythm, in a storm, will attract us
the abstract acoustics of storms, we do now recognize it
– though we are though, just novices
the world is a room larger than we can possibly construct,
it resounds in the mind
its music could be our singular voice
(from the poetry manuscript: a b c & d) (©2014)
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CHECK THIS OUT >>> an audio reading of this poem:
O U T L I E R 